Cumulus Discord at Cuppa Joy Coffee, 21 April 2012

I’d like to take a few seconds to send out props to a local Vancouver band, Cumulus Discord, who played an acoustic set Saturday night (21 April 2012) at Cuppa Joy Coffee in Kitsilano. Cuppa Joy gave them the floor for the evening and they played two 50-minute sets.

Frontman Alexander Keurvorst was charismatic as ever, belting out poetry with a voice that rang as sweetly as if an angel had taken up a celestial tuning harp and struck it on a star. His soaring melodies brought the room to a breathless silence, released only when the last vibration of his guitar’s nylon strings faded into the inchoate ether of the spell that been cast upon the room. A thunderous applause awoke us from our rapture — had we been but dreaming?

Ingrid Cheung’s army of flutes and incomparable harmonies had lulled us into a trance-like stupor. We existed only in the moments of pure music emanating from her lips — no future, no past; only the sheer, unadulterated ecstasy of her aerophone glory.

The violin was held in the delicate and sensual hands of a true master. Devon Kroeger pulled our heart-strings taut and bowed them as if she knew them intimately. If a man or woman present was not ready to give their life for another moment of Devon’s sensuous stringing, then they possessed cold, dead souls.

Marcus Luk, of course, is the power behind the throne upon which these kings and queens of music are seated. Steadily pushing them to new and greater heights, he percusses — now fast, now slow, we all are subject to his divine whims.

Re-interpreting the work of the modern era’s undisputed poet laureate, Mark Allan Hoppus, Cumulus Discord created a magnificent and fresh reading of his most cherished work, “Dammit (Growing Up)“, eliciting layers of meaning hitherto undiscovered.

A work of their own, “Cherry Orchard”, so named after the Anton Chekhov play offered a sad and simple oblation of the mundane things in life to the realm of divine comedy which they more appropriately belong in the untouchable world of our four raconteurs.

Cumulus Discord even had a query for us, their humble and unworthy audience — they currently seek a change of nomenclature. Cumulus Discord, clearly, is not a name which encompasses their unrivaled majesty and, as an act of good will to their adoring fans, deigned to request suggestions for what we in the mortal realm would describe as a “band name.” Personally, I am partial to Good Morrow.

If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended; that next you visit Cuppa Joy, here gods walked among the boys.